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'Miracle' baby celebrates 1st birthday today

Submitted photo Jasmine is only a few weeks old in this photograph.

Holly Frary holds her daughter Jasmine Faith Frary Tuesday, March 16, in Middletown. Jasmine was born premature, and was given 10 percent chance to live. Today, March 19, she will celebrate her first birthday.

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Photos: Miracle baby celebrates birthday

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By Rick McCrabb, Columnist Updated 7:22 AM Friday, March 19, 2010

FRANKLIN — She was given the perfect middle name.

When Jasmine Faith Frary was born fourth months premature one year ago today, March 19, she weighed 1 pound, 1 ounce, measured 10 inches, and was given a 10 percent chance of surviving.

The day before she was born, her parents, Dwayne and Holly Frary, were told once the baby was taken through Caesarean section, they could cuddle her until she passed away.

They made burial plans.

Today, it’s Faith’s first birthday.

You gotta have faith.

“She’s a miracle,” her mother said.

“Our miracle,” her dad said.

Holly Frary, who had three children after “perfect pregnancies,” said she felt sick one night while taking business classes at Miami University Middletown. When the pain persisted, she went to Atrium Medical Center’s emergency room. Her blood pressure was elevated, her liver was swollen and she was diagnosed with HELLP Syndrome, a life-threatening obstetric complication characterized by hemolysis, elevated liver enzyme levels and a low platelet count.

Her life and her baby’s life were threatened.

She was taken to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton. That night she received a steroid shot in hopes of developing her daughter’s lungs quicker. “It was a waiting game,” she said. “The longer she stayed in me, the better.”

But Holly’s body was under too much stress. The baby had to come out. The family prepared for the worst, but prayed for the best.

“One day turned to two days and two days turned to one week, and one week turned to one month,” she said.

And today, one month turned to one year.

'It’s time for some good memories’

Holly Frary calls March 19, 2009 — the day her fourth child was born — the “worst day” of her life.

Mothers usually call the birth of a child the “best day” of their lives, but this was no ordinary birth.

One year ago today, Holly and Dwayne Frary, with three healthy children at home, were told their fourth child — aptly named Jasmine Faith Frary — was going to be taken through a Caesarean section, four months before her July 6 due date.

Holly Frary, a 1994 Edgewood High School graduate, was diagnosed with HELLP, a syndrome characterized by hemolysis, elevated liver enzyme levels and a low platelet count.

When Jasmine was born at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, she weighed 1 pound, 1 ounce, was 10 inches long, and doctors gave her a 10 percent survival rate.

She remained in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for 116 days, and every second she straddled the fine line between life and death.

The Frarys, afraid of losing Jasmine, refused to decorate her room, buy her a crib or clothes. They didn’t want any reminders of her death around the house.

Jasmine had other plans. The Frary family will celebrate her first birthday today, March 19.

“We didn’t expect this outcome at all,” Holly said recently while holding Jasmine on her lap. “I don’t understand how she made it.”

Jasmine’s father, Dwayne Frary, an electrician repairman at AK Steel, added: “We probably don’t know how lucky we are. She has beat the odds.”

The first year has been “rough,” her mother said. Jasmine, her lungs not fully developed, suffers from respiratory illnesses, and was diagnosed with H1N1 a few months ago.

“We about lost her,” her mother said.

She recently was taken off oxygen, and she’s starting to look — and act — like a baby, her mother said. Unlike so many other children born four months premature, Jasmine has no eyesight or hearing difficulties, though she can’t talk because of the damage the feeding tube caused her larynx.

The Frary family has been through a difficult year. Their three other children — Jordan, 12; Jenna, 11; and Juliane, 8, — all students at Wayne Anthony Elementary School in Franklin — had no summer vacation trip last year . They accompanied their parents to the hospital every day. They probably memorized every magazine in the waiting room, every snack in the vending machines.

Now the Frary family portrait is complete.

Jasmine is “destined for greatness,” her father said.

And Holly Frary hopes today is better than one year ago today.

“It’s time for some good memories,” she said looking through Jasmine’s baby book. “It’s time for a celebration.”

Contact this columnist at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.

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